If you’re reading this, you’ve probably made a financial commitment and secured an app for your event. The hope is that it’s full of awesome features you think your attendees are going to love. Smart move! Unfortunately, that is only half the battle and now you have to get the word out. To get started, follow these key practices to grow and engage your event app community.

1. Leverage your influencers.

Before you begin driving app downloads, posting your download link all over the internet and emailing all of your attendees, think about who your centres of influence might be. They could be volunteers, photographers, speakers, performers, or prominent figures who you know will be in attendance. Anyone who helps make your event a success can be an advocate for building your event app community. Check out the next post in this series that focuses on finding and approaching event influencers for tips, templates, and techniques on how to find and leverage the influencers at your event to help you get event app downloads.

2. Make it easy for people to download.

This one is a little more obvious… Feature your app download links wherever you can (Android & iOS). If you’re using a Festfeed mobile app, you can leverage the unique event URL, which creates a microsite with an app preview specific to your event, a proven feature for increasing app download numbers. Regardless, you should feature the app download links on your event website, e-tickets, social pages, in email communications, and through any other digital marketing channel you have access to. The most powerful sources for on-boarding new users have historically been Email and Facebook.

3. Make it compelling to join.

Give the attendees a compelling reason to download your app or click your event’s unique URL. Exclusive updates, announcements, rewards, sponsor giveaways, recognition, contests, and FOMO are all great incentives that influence attendees to download your event app. In fact, “60% of millennials stated that they would be interested in receiving push notifications about deals on food, drinks, merchandise, and possible VIP experiences while they are actually at an event” according to Forbes. Highlight these benefits wherever you’re featuring your app download links to really entice people to download.

4. Give members a voice and put the emphasis on sharing.

You’ve made a wise choice if you’ve invested in an event app with a community component. ‘Connecting with the community’ is consistently ranked among the top three most used features users in Festfeed applications. If your event app has a community component, you have the opportunity to fill the app with relevant content from years past, important information, FAQ’s, and exclusive updates. All this content gives new users something to digest once they actually download the app. This will also spark content sharing and welcome new members to your event app community. Getting attendees involved in the community is an amazing way to get people talking about your app as people start to encourage their friends to join the conversation.

5. Harness the power of referrals.

There is no better way to grow a community, then by getting people to invite their friends to join. Harness the power of referrals by asking your attendees to share your app download links, or an event’s unique URL with their network through their personal social channels, instant message, and email. Incentivizing these actions with a contest or potential ticket upgrade to get even more by in. From studies we’ve conducted, when asked in a personalized email campaign, over 40% of attendees who had already downloaded the app were willing to share the event download link with their network for a chance to win.

Conclusion

Stay authentic as you grow your app community with Festfeed. Think about creating a fun environment where your participants can engage and be heard. By committing to building an engaged app community now, you’ll be able to communicate with your audience like never before in the future. We’ll be with you every step of the way and are here to answer any questions you might have in the process. Drop us a line if you want some free advice along the way or have any suggestions on ways we can improve!